Occasional dispatches from the front line of spiritual battle. A Catholic blog. Postings often conceived in the garden, at the playground or at the kitchen sink and hastily typed out far too late at night after putting the children to bed.

Blog started on the Feast of The Divine Mercy 2011, the day of the Beatification of Pope John Paul II. Blessed Pope John Paul II - Ora Pro Nobis!

Tuesday, 20 September 2011

I never thought I'd like a bouncy-castle church...

...but this inflatable church, made in Poland to be used in Russia is absolutely brilliant! Father Krzysztof Kowal the Catholic parish priest of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in the far East of Russia had requested permission to build a Catholic church in the area but had been turned down repeatedly by the uncooperative local government. A novel solution was proposed by a Polish friend, Robert Wojcik, whose usual business is building inflatable toys for children in Kolobrzeg, Poland. Wojeck created an inflatable gothic-style chapel, weighing 100 pounds and easily transportable. Being a temporary structure and inflatable means that Fr. Kowal can dodge the planning restrictions that have thus far thwarted his efforts. The inflatable chapel will be the first Catholic church on the Kamchatka Peninsula.

Clearly this isn't an ideal scenario - you can only imagine the potential for abuse in the wrong environment - but the various news reports about this consistently point to a local government unwilling to allow the construction of a Catholic church, simply because it is a Catholic church. This isn't an unusual situation in Russia -- two days before the inflatable chapel arrived in Kamchatka, a chapel boat carrying the relics of eight saints began a voyage down the Volga in an attempt to reach communities where there is no church. The chapel boat is an ecumenical project between the Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church and carries the relics of John the Baptist, Anne, Bartholomew the Apostle, the martyrs Stephen and Lawrence, George, John Chrysostom and Cyril, the missionary to the Slav people, all of whom are important to both Churches. The relics are a gift from the Catholic Church to the Russian Orthodox Church, and the boat has been paid for by Aid to the Church in Need who help the persecuted church with both practical and spiritual aid. Help them to help priests like Father Kowal.

Hopefully the publicity generated by this story - and by Father Kowal's novel solution to bureaucratic intransigence - will encourage the authorities to allow the construction of a dignified, permanent church for the Catholics of the Kamchatka Peninsula. Things could be much worse -- and much more expensive: an inflatable church might not be your cup of tea, but at least it looks like a church unlike this

4 comments:

I am writing from the Christian Science Sentinel Magazine in Boston. We are running a story about the inflatable church and would like to use the photo posted on this blog to accompany it. Can you please let me know who to contact to get permission for this.thank you,Carolynn DeCillo, Graphic Designer, Christian Science SentinelDecilloc@csps.com

About Me

Catholic wife, mother of seven (four lovely children with us in this Vale of Tears, three tiny babes in the care of Our Blessed Mother in Heaven), home educator and breastfeeding counsellor living a happy but schizophrenic existence between South London and Southern France...